


In Learning (The Hula Hoop Remix)

by Estirose



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 04:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amanda tries to teach Spock his first words before he is born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Learning (The Hula Hoop Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Framlingem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Framlingem/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Guide](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7729) by Framlingem. 



> Thank you to my beta, the lovely Defeatedbyabridge!

She tries to teach Spock his first words before he is born.

Vulcans treasure education, of course. Learning, being functional. Their way of teaching is different, all cells and computerized instruction and lack of touch. She's used to all face-to-face, where teachers stood before students and tried to teach them facts instead of this one-to-one, computer-to-pupil method.

Sarek took her to visit the school that Spock will go to months before. It is a place of stark beauty, and lonely, and yet a classroom of sorts. There is social interaction between the moments of learning, the interaction being different than she is used to but somehow the same.

She doesn't feel at all upset about his school, and yet she somehow wishes that she could take him into her arms and teach him herself.

But Spock will be Vulcan, she knows, and it's best to have him Vulcan. It's how society expects he will be and how he will be the more comfortable.

Still, she thinks about the children that she has taught, about how they all had their individual learning experiences and yet they had her to help them out, to answer questions, to boost them forward. Individualized learning in a classroom setting has been the norm on Earth since the early 21st century, taken from the homeschoolers and the distance-learners and packaged into a neat bundle for those who want social interaction to go with their learning.

The school on Vulcan is little different, in that way. The computer is patient and never gets frustrated. The children are boosted where they need to and left alone when they don't need it. Sometimes, Amanda thinks they love it. It's a different way of learning for a different society, where logic and emotional control are paramount, where it's important to be as calm as the adults around them, and the computer that teaches them things.

Sometimes, she wonders how well this model would work on Earth.

It's been tested on Earth, probably; everything has. Probably works to some extent, with the right kids and the right culture. Humans look at other worlds, other cultures, and try to adapt themselves. Adaptation, a handy thing. 

It why, Amanda thinks, Sarek fell in love with Earth. With her.

She knows he's watching as she says things to Spock. "Apple," she says, even though they don't grow on Vulcan. "Banana." 

On her screen are the images that go with the words, the sounds. She doesn't know if Spock can even understand, but the whole idea that x=y, that sound=picture, is a logical concept.

Sarek watches with amusement. People who haven't known him for that long would describe his face as expressionless, Vulcan. She knows better. She's had years of experience in reading him. 

Learning works in funny ways. The first teachers have to dig until they find a child's foundations, build up from there. The child has to know what a dog is before one can start talking about Spot. Sometimes one has to be able to read the quirk of an eyebrow before one can read the entire expression.

Spock will learn logic, learn math, learn how to conduct himself around others. She trusts the school system to teach him that, for all their methods are different. But there will be a time she will have him, too, teach him how to jump rope and understand rock music. To create joy out of spinning hoops and the childrens' games of Earth, and to understand touch as a human does.

For his own sake, growing up, he must be Vulcan. But she will teach him how to be human, to understand humans, to get along with humans. Sure, it will be a side that she will teach him to keep hidden, if needed, but it is logical for him to understand. Especially if he plans to deal with the emotional species, not just humans, but others. Especially if he plans to make a choice, a logical one, about who and what he is.

She wants him to have all the information. Any teacher does, for their students to make good life choices, to make the correct calculations and behave the correct way. The correct way might be different for Vulcans than it is for humans, but it doesn't matter. He must make his own decisions.

But she can make things easier, make things flow for him. She can help guide his mind as surely as the computers do, and even give him the foundations that will make school so much easier for him. She may not have ever taught school as Spock is to be taught, but she can work with it.

After all, she learns too. Everybody learns, or they die. Maybe not physically, but mentally. They lose the ability to adapt. In the desert of her adopted world, children die if they do not learn flexibility. In the universe, adults do, too. Few people are eternally in school, but everybody still learns.

It's survival, taking things in and making something useful of them. She doesn't doubt that a Vulcan child would understand the physics of a hula hoop, how it works. To understand the reason behind spinning one is a much harder exercise, and yet understanding the virtues of human play might save a life someday.

It makes her think of how Earth schools now require creative play as well as computer-based learning. She thinks of one of her first preschool students and how she was presented with a drawing of a mythical flying creature, a "sagarc", that the girl insisted was real. The girl is probably grown-up now, but Amanda still has her drawing framed, sitting in the hallway of their little house.

Someday, Spock will think to ask questions about that picture and the ideas behind it. But, he'll probably think it illogical at first. After all, myths and legends are a person's attempt to explain the world around them before they can scientifically explain it. Somewhere, maybe, the little girl's ancestors encountered a strange bird and described it in such a way that their children have passed it down from mother to daughter to mother to daughter. Or maybe the little girl discovered it herself one day, while walking down a path, and not knowing what to call it.

It really doesn't matter. As a teacher from a line of teachers, she knows what's important. To ready the brain for learning, to make grooves where curiosity and imagination can flow, to build the foundations so that learning can take place in whatever way learning does take place, throughout her child's life. Maybe teaching Spock what an apple looks like is foolish, at this point in time. But she has faith in herself, in Sarek, in this world and her world. And most importantly, in learning.


End file.
